“The whole Earth is melting…” No, that’s not the headline from this Sunday’s East Valley Tribune (but it could be), it’s just a line from the cover of Avengers #85, our heatwave appropriate selection for this week’s Classic Comic Cover Corner.

On the way home this past Friday evening it was apparent that Summer has arrived with a vengeance in the Valley of the Sun as my car’s outdoor thermometer pegged at 121 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s right, it’s the time of year when local TV channels feature melting ice blocks as news and industrious kid-scientists experiment with cooking eggs on the sidewalk.

The Avengers faced a situation very similar to a Phoenix summer back in February of 1971, in a Roy Thomas scripted story called, “The World Is Not for Burning!”

While Thor is transporting the team back to New York from an unsavory world called Polemachus, somewhere along the dimension-jumping trip the Vision, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver get dropped into an alternate Earth where the blazing sun is destroying the planet.

Unfortunately, the three Avengers are in an inter-dimensional ghost-like state and there’s not anything they can do about the heat (much like the citizens of the Valley), but at least Wanda (Scarlet Witch) is able to use her hex powers to whisk the trio back in time so they can team-up with the Squadron Supreme (in their first comic book appearance) and save the planet from future destruction.

Only our magical air-conditioning units are going to save us – stay cool out there!

Disclaimers

NerdvanaMedia.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. We also make use of Google AdSense and targeted advertising using browser cookies, and we sometimes collect certain information from our users. Learn more.